Can't solve the housing crisis without crashing the price of housing - Brash

Donald Brash on The AM Show with Olympic medallist Barbara Kendall. Credits: The AM Show

Don Brash says it will be difficult to fix New Zealand's housing crisis without crashing the price of housing and wiping out many Kiwis' retirement plans.

His comments come after Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters said he wants to get house prices to no more than five times the living wage - so around $213,000. Presently the median price of a house nationwide is $550,000, and in Auckland it's $870,000.

"I want house prices to moderate - what that means is a sustained period where they're not going up by 20 percent, but people get value in their priorities - but they're aren't going up to the extent that people can't afford to be in the market."

Don Brash.
Photo credit: AAP

And making house prices come down would be political suicide, says Dr Brash.

"The only way to deal with the housing crisis is to reduce the price of houses. How to you get re-elected if the price of houses drops 50 percent?"

If Mr Twyford was more interested in solving the housing crisis than getting re-elected, Dr Brash said he would "change the zoning rules and change the way infrastructure is funded".

"He knows what to do."

Not a single region of New Zealand is considered affordable under the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey. It says anything above three times the median income is unaffordable. Whanganui comes closest at 3.03. Auckland is at 9.3 and Queenstown 11.26.